Popping the Bubble Wrap

Is it just me or have playgrounds gotten pretty lame these days? It was a no school day Friday, and the first day of spring and all, so I took our kids down to the park for the first romp of the season. And while I watched them play a time-travelers variation of Star-Wars, I kept thinking how tame the playground apparatus was.

Oh, sure, it looks bright and friendly and modern when you're driving through the neighbourhood on your way to little league soccer or Suzuki piano lessons, admiring it from a distance (and judging from the amount of kids I actually see playing on these playgrounds, neighbourhood ornamentation may be their primary purpose). But up close, the mirage of play possibilities dissipates into a flatland of insipid safety. The highest platform was only about 4 feet high. The longest slide was less than 6 feet long. Nothing much to swing on, dangle from, leap off. No teetering, no tottering. No merry-going-round.

It was really just a collection of low staircases and landings, with a shallow-grade "slide" at one end.

There's this family-therapist, Micahel Ungar, who talks about the phenomenon of the "bubble-wrapped child"-- the over-protected modern kid whose every move is monitored, micro-managed and manipulated so as to minimize risk and maximize "success." He argues that when we deny kids the opportunity to experience risk, we deny them the chance to take responsibility. And this is a bad thing. I heard a child psychologist on CBC Radio last month make similar claims: our children are not experiencing the unstructured, independent, risky play that is vital to their social development. She went on to claim that the over-protection of our children is really a sublimation of our own deep anxiety about the uncertain future.

These therapists claim that we've bubble-wrapped our kids, removing all risks from their lives. And that in trying to keep them safe, we're actually harming them deeply. As I watched my kids walk up and down the flights of steps at the ultra-safe "stay-ground" yesterday, I started to suspect they might be right.

But this is what I'm thinking about after Friday's trip to the park: do we bubble wrap our kids theologically, too? Do we try to keep them spiritually "safe" by avoiding questions about God, and life with God, that are awkward, confusing, unanswerable? Do we encourage them to keep things safely superficial because of the spiritual risk involved in playing higher, deeper, further in?

Some examples from my own parenting: "Dad, prayer doesn't work"; "Dad, I was reading the Bible and it said something about doing... you know... 'it' with animals..."; "Dad, I noticed that in the Bible it always says 'brothers' when it talks about people in the church. Why doesn't it ever say 'sisters'?"

Now, things like the efficacy of prayer and gender-exclusive language in the Bible are risky topics. Lots of potential for spiritual skinned-knees and bruised elbows there. Sometimes it's tempting to bubble wrap their young hearts with the cushy answers of a glossed-over easy-believism.

But the potentially faith-breaking questions are also the faith-making questions. And if we're willing to let our kids ask some hard ones, face some uncertainty-- take some risks-- we just might see them mature into the spiritually intrepid men and women God made them to be.